The Central Valley Business Journal has announced a contest: Suggest ways to make Stockton better. Winner gets a $50 gift certificate.

In the spirit of municipal improvement - and because the gift certificate is for Angelina's Spaghetti House, which has good ravioli and, come to think of it, a bar that would pair nicely with $50 - I'm in.

My suggestion: a downtown houseboat community.

Two model communities spring to mind. The first is in Sausalito. The city's Waldo Point Harbor holds 245 floating homes, some of which are marvelously colorful.

The residents are an eclectic mix of old hippies, Silicon Valley gazillionaires, crusty old salts, swingers, gentry, artists and the occasional visiting sea lion.

The boats are a mix, too: your basic Lake Shasta rentals, but also custom-made curiosities rising atop the hulls of rebuilt vessels. If you ever saw the elephant boat on the Calaveras River out by Darrahville, you get the idea.

Houseboat-dwelling musicians play local clubs. Houseboat-dwelling sculptors decorated the docks with their works. Some people have splurged on eye-catching fantasy boats. The community is such an attraction that the city offers houseboat walking tours.

The second model community is Stockton. Yes, for much of its existence, Stockton had a houseboat community around the channel head.

Because it's a natural.

A houseboat community would offer people the chance to live in the heart of the city. That would help restore the downtown neighborhood.

Experts from the Urban Land Institute earlier this year said homes and private investment are the missing puzzle pieces of downtown revival.

The ULI also said the best way to restart downtown is to repopulate Miner Avenue. Well, what's at the west end of Miner? The water, thank you.

A live-work downtown is the sort of common-sense urban planning Stockton forgot in its addiction to sprawl.

Workers living within walking distance of jobs would comply with the General Plan Settlement Agreement, and various state and federal environmental laws.

Houseboats would provide housing to people too modest of means or too bored to live in the suburbs: river rats, bohemians, young singles, international men of mystery - you, perhaps.

They, in turn, would support downtown cafes, clubs and markets. And help make downtown safer.

Most of all, a houseboat community would rectify the pretzel logic of Stockton planning.

In Stockton, water is so desirable to live by that developers dig lakes with bulldozers to complement their housing projects at great cost and rigmarole. Meanwhile, planners ignore the main waterway flowing free, gratis, into the heart of the city.

A houseboat community makes a statement that Stockton is a water city that accommodates diverse lifestyles. It plays to the city's geographic and demographic strength.

Are there obstacles? Always.

If memory serves, descendants of city founder Charles M. Weber own the channel bottom (!), hence must be compensated for development over it.

Also, the city has a track record of egregious cost overruns in marina construction. Redevelopment agencies have been eliminated anyway. This is a job for a public-private partnership.

The developer, in turn, will have to deal with Kafkaesque state water bureaucracies.

But hey. This is a contest I want to win. Don't expect me to shoot any more holes in my idea.

If you love Stockton - the Delta city it really is, not the poseur city leaders created with the civic marina - then you love the waterfront and the city that sprang up around it. Houseboats are an organic part of that special place.